Part 2

Let's skip ahead...September of last year I switched jobs in hopes of regaining a sense of purpose and joy - which were two things that I had been lacking in. Turns out the change of jobs only sunk me deeper into the pit. Not only did I hate that job, but I drove twice as far to get to it. I was literally losing time because so much of it was spent on the road. By February I was done.

Then out of the blue I get a text from an old friend at my church in St. Joe, Michigan. She wanted to see if I'd be willing to come back up to Michigan for a weekend retreat for their middle school group. She knew I was going through a hard time and needed to get away and be surrounded by people who loved me so she invited me up, no strings attached. And I went. And it was awesome.

I turned off my phone for 2.5 days and just focused on God and the relationships around me. The first night someone puked in the tabernacle. Now this might seem like a minor, albeit graphic detail, but it's important to the story as a whole. While we were waiting for the maintenance crew at the camp, I decided to go ahead and start taking care of some of the mess. A few minutes later, an older couple, who happened to be the maintenance people, came in and took over for me. The next day at lunch, the same couple called me over to their lunch table and introduced themselves to me.

For the past year, Gary and Sue had served as interim camp directors for the camp we stayed at. And the barf cleaning display showed them all they needed to know about me. Gary offered me a job for Activities Director / Assistant Camp Director for the summer. Now despite all the difficulties I was having at my current job, it paid well and had benefits. But, I heard him out, asked specific questions about the job and gave him the pat Christian answer..."let me pray about it".

If I'm honest, I didn't pray about it. In fact, I barely gave it a second thought. Until a few weeks later...